


Time to Run Again

by ZestyMelon



Series: Time to Run Again [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Action/Adventure, Attempt at Humor, Episode: s06e08 Let's Kill Hitler, Gen, Humor, I tried my best?, Post-Episode: s04e06 The Doctor's Daughter, There's a sassy cat called Roger, Time Agency, and Jenny's companion is completely done with everything, but only briefly, or i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-08-29 12:56:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8490667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZestyMelon/pseuds/ZestyMelon
Summary: Jenny's been doing a lot in the 2 months she's been alive. Seeing planets, rescuing civilizations, and running. A lot. But now she embarks on her most dangerous mission yet--a relaxing getaway at a five star ocean resort. How will she survive the boredom? One hint: it all starts with a cat.





	1. Chapter 1

 

It started with go-karts and a cat, and ended with charges of sedition and near execution. Which is all to say, Jenny went on a vacation and it ended badly, to no one's great surprise. It was, however, to Prentice's great disappointment. 

 

               "I really am sorry about this," Jenny said. "I know you were having a good time, and I kind of, well-" 

 

               "Ruined the whole thing? No, honestly you didn't," said Prentice. "This is how I end all my holidays. In a dungeon. Over a cat."

 

The cat in question, lounging contentedly in Jenny's arms, meowed.

 

               "Roger thinks you're being a prick," said Jenny. Roger meowed again. "He says he'd do the same for you."

 

Prentice glared.

 

               "Jenny, we're in a dungeon. I'm not being a prick. I'm being justifiably angry!"

 

               "Alright, alright! Don't get mad at  _me_  then!" Jenny said.

 

               "You're the one who called  _me_  a prick!"

 

               "That was Roger! Honestly Prentice, it's like you're not even paying attention!"

 

Prentice groaned, throwing his hands up in a familiar mixture of hopelessness and frustration.

 

               "You know what? Fine. I don't care. I'm going back to my corner of the dungeon. If you need me, I'll be sulking. If you see tears, it's because I'm upset. If you want to apologize, buy me a fruit basket. Lots of strawberries. No peaches. Or better yet, figure a way out of this bloody dungeon!"

 

Jenny looked at Roger.

 

               "He's normally very nice," she said. "Might be a stress headache coming on, he always gets those when we've been arrested."

 

* * *

 

 

Now at this point, you may be asking yourself, who is Prentice? A valid question, as Prentice is largely unimportant, and some might say uninteresting. But if you do want to know who Prentice is, these are the facts both most interesting and most relevant about him, though not necessarily in that order.

 

Prentice is a Time Agent. He's a very good Time Agent. He's smart, loyal, and efficient. He follows rules to their very letter, and is respectful to his peers and commanders alike. He's also very punctual, which is remarkably rare for a Time Agent. Actually, all of these traits are rare for a Time Agent. The Agency itself is usually an utter mess, filled with crude, self-interested individuals who come for the promise of time travel, and stay for-well, quite few of them do. But another important fact about Prentice is that he wants to change that about the Time Agency.

 

Prentice takes his tea with milk and no sugar. He prefers dogs to cats, and hot to cold weather. His favorite soup is french onion. These are interesting facts. Perhaps we should stick to relevant ones. The fact of the matter is, trying to enforce rules in an Agency allergic to responsibility will only make a person unpopular, which is exactly how Prentice got stuck with the worst task a Time Agent can be handed. Hitler Duty. 

 

Adolf Hitler was a German head of state in the 20th century who did many terrible things to make people dislike him. Some of these people lived hundreds of years after him, and thought it might be a good idea to kill Hitler before he had the chance to do all those awful, awful things. Some more of these people had access to time travel, and you can probably guess the rest.

 

Now, the Time Agency had no problem with letting people kill one of history's greatest mass murderers. Except apparently they did. It turned out, killing Hitler changed Earth's time line drastically. So drastically, in fact, that it threatened to tear a hole in the universe, and, after waiting a bit to see if someone else would fix it, the Time Agency was forced to act.

 

The entire ordeal was really hard to sort out, and the agents involved had to fill out paperwork afterwards, which Time Agents famously hate to do. So it was that the Time Agency appointed a permanent guard to the truly terrible, abhorrent man that nearly every other time traveler in the universe would at some point or another try and kill. Prentice once tried to tell a commanding officer that taking a selfie with Marie Antoinette went against Agency protocol, which is how he ended up in Berlin, 1938, on Hitler Duty.

 

Those are enough facts about Prentice for now. Here's a fact about Jenny. She was also in Berlin in 1938. She, like Prentice, had not wanted to be there. However, Jenny was there because she had just stolen a vortex manipulator and still wasn't quite sure how it worked. Unknowingly imitating her father as a much younger man, she had been traveling at random, assuring anyone who asked, and several who didn't, that of course she knew exactly how to work her time machine, as it was after all  _her_  time machine. Except for the fact that it was stolen. One fact about Jenny is that she is really remarkably like her dad.

 

But here's a fact about 1938 Berlin. Prentice and Jenny weren't the only time travelers there. There other time travelers aside from them. And the Doctor. And Amy, Rory, and Mels, who turned out to be River. And aside from the shape-shifting alien punishment robot driven by miniaturized people. Yes, high above the city streets, hovering in an invisible spaceship, were nefarious ne'er do wells ready to make life miserable for the people of Earth. They were led by a megalomaniacal demagogue with ambitions of planetary conquest, to add to the many other megalomaniacal demagogues with ambitions of planetary conquest living on Earth in the 20th century. Before too long, Prentice and Jenny had discovered the spaceship, and were working together to thwart their plans.

 

Prentice and Jenny were ultimately successful, thanks in no small part to Jenny's ingenious use of some twine and an old boot. But, by technically abandoning his post Prentice ended up in a whole bunch of trouble. Now usually, his superiors wouldn't have minded. They abandoned their posts more often than they manned them. In this particular circumstance, however, they were furious. Apparently some time travelers had come close to killing Hitler while Prentice had been away. It was just good luck they'd only given Hitler a black eye and locked him in a cupboard before leaving. If they'd done much else, Prentice might have lost his job then and there.

 

As it was, he was let off with a reprimand and an assignment. Jenny was now considered a "potential asset of substantial value" by the Agency. Prentice was now considered her handler. It was his job to show her the ropes, and keep her out of trouble. However, it soon became apparent that Jenny had no interest in ropes, and a great interest in trouble. This resulted in the eventful weeks the two had spent together, in which they'd been arrested 23 times, nearly killed 46 times, and had overthrown at least five governments. Prentice thought it was about time for a break.

 

He scoured magazines, travel guides, and brochures, finally settling on Izod, the twelfth moon of Zoop in the year 4932. It was listed as the forty-third most popular tourist destination by that year's Universal Geographic's annual Intergalactic Traveler issue. "Originally a trading post on the outskirts of the Anhari System," the issue's description ran, "the moon's sandy beaches, fair climate, and exotic forests make it among the most pleasant relaxation destinations in the known galaxy, outside of Space Hawaii(see #13 on our list). Its resorts boast at least four star ratings or higher, so for those of you out there who are overworked, or just overstressed, this is the place to put your feet up and relax!"

 

It was safe, small, and out of the way. That should have been Prentice's first clue that something would go horribly wrong. The second should have been his attempt to explain the concept of a vacation to Jenny, which went something like this.

 

               "So you just go somewhere nice and do nothing?"

 

               "No, you go somewhere nice and relax."

 

               "Isn't that the same thing?"

 

               "No. You don't do nothing, you just do the things you like."

 

               "But I do that anyway."

 

               "Right, you do things you like that don't involve explosions, imprisonment, overthrowing despots, or stopping unethical genetic experiments. And you especially avoid doing all of those at once."

 

               "But those are the things I like!"

 

               "They have go-karts here."

 

               "So vacations are go-karts?"

 

               "For you, yes."

 

It's not that Prentice was blind to those first hints of trouble. But it had been a day, a full 21 hours, and the vacation was actually going quite well. Jenny had really taken to go-karting, and Prentice had found a nice spot on the beach very, very far away from the resort's race track. He finally had the chance to kick back, put his feet up, and review the finer sections of the  _Time Agency's Approved Field Manual_ , fourth edition. He didn't dare voice it, but he had a hope, rather an inkling of a wish that possibly, even plausibly, he was going to pass an entire vacation in peace. He really, really should have known better.

 

* * *

 

Jenny had found a cat. That wasn't the first thing that happened. The first thing was go-karting. Jenny liked go-karts very much. It was just like trying to outrun bad guys, but she didn't have to worry about getting shot. She didn't much like getting shot. She also didn't like how slow go-karts were, but that was easy. All it took was a bit of tinkering and a jet engine she'd acquired at a local salvage yard, and viola! Fun go-karts. Or so she assumed. Jenny didn't actually get a chance to try it out before management cornered her with a lecture about safety, destruction of resort property, and some other boring words. Jenny stopped paying attention about halfway through, but did catch the bit at the end where she was banned from go-karting for the rest of her stay. She crossed her arms, frowned, and then said,

 

               "Well what else am I supposed to do here?" And slumped out of the race track and onto the street.

 

One thing was clear. Prentice must not find out about this. He'd given very clear instructions at the start of the trip that she mustn't get into trouble, and while Jenny didn't care much for instructions, she was beginning to care about Prentice. Truth was, ever since Messaline Jenny had been feeling rather lonely. It wasn't something she'd had time to consider before she ran away to follow in her father's footsteps (or was it time-tracks?). Since then, she'd had plenty of time to reflect, and came to realize why the Doctor didn't travel alone. Jenny could have the most spectacular adventures, but when she returned to her ship, she returned only to the silence of her own company.

 

So when she'd met tall, twig person with the bushy brown hair, when he helped her save the Earth from funny purple aliens, and when finally he insisted on tagging along with her, Jenny had accepted the arrangement quite easily. There was, of course, a caveat. Jenny wasn't about to follow orders, not from Prentice, and not from any Time Agency thing-y. She already had orders from the Doctor. Those were the only ones worth following. But Prentice, bless him, was very by-the-book. Quite literally in fact, as he seemed to always carry with him his bloody Time Agency manual. He was never comfortable breaking protocol, even when it was more effective, or more fun. He was therefore chronically uncomfortable traveling with Jenny. He deserved a rest, that much was clear, and she had made it her mission to give him one.

 

So Jenny was walking. Down a street. A normal street. Boring. Jenny was bored. She was passing an alley (small, clean, well-lit, not even a hint of danger, how dreadful), and heard a noise. The noise went a little something like this. Rustle rustle, meow. Jenny paused and looked down the alley.

 

               "Who's there?"

 

More rustling, and another meow.

 

               "You're not trying to take over the world, are you?" Jenny asked, making her way slowly into the alley. "Please say yes, this place could do with some excitement."

 

There was no answer. There was a cat. It was inside a trash can, which Jenny discovered when she lifted its lid.

 

               "Now what kind of creature are you?"

 

To say Jenny was smart is a vast understatement. It's like saying ice cream is just 'okay'. It would be far more appropriate to describe the towering deliciousness of ice cream, the way nearly every food in the universe fails to compare to its exquisite taste. In other words, Jenny was a genius. Problem was, she was a young genius, and very inexperienced. Part of the reason she enjoyed having Prentice around was that he could explain to her the things she really ought to know. Like, for instance, what a cat was.

 

 The cat meowed again.

 

               "That's not a threat, is it?" Jenny said, inspecting the trash cat more closely. "No, I don't think so. You're very tiny, aren't you? And fluffy. I don't think tiny fluffy things threaten people much." She leaned over and picked up the cat. It meowed again. Jenny meowed back, hoping it was some form of greeting. "Are you lost? Do you need help finding your way home?"

 

               "Actually, I rather need to get away from it."

 

Jenny spun around, hoping to see who'd spoken. It couldn't have been the cat, she thought, its lips hadn't moved. But there was no one else in the alley, and if there was no one in the alley, there hadn't been anyone close enough to have said that. Jenny looked, eyebrow raised, back to the cat.

 

               "Was that you?" She asked.

 

               "Who else?" Again, the cat's lips hadn't moved, but no one else could have spoken.

 

               "Hang on, are you inside my head?" Jenny said. She was familiar with telepathy as a concept, but had yet to come across it in person. Of course, she hadn't come across cats either, so she was open to new experiences.

 

               "No, it would seem that you're in mine," the cat replied.

 

Well that's new, Jenny thought to herself. Always nice to learn new skills, especially when it allowed her to communicate with small fluffy creatures.

 

               "Most would simply call me a 'cat'. Though personally, I prefer Roger," said the cat.

 

               "Roger the cat," Jenny said, and Roger purred in response. "I'm Jenny. It's a real pleasure."

 

               "Jenny the human," said Roger. "Likewise."

 

               "Sorry, not human. Just Jenny."

 

               "Not human?" Roger said curiously. "Then what sort of creature are you?"

 

               "Better question," Jenny said. "Why are you trying to get away from home?"

 

               "Well it's not so much my home as it is my dreadful owner." At the word owner, Jenny frowned.

 

               "You're being kept against your will?" she said. Roger purred in the affirmative.

 

Jenny felt her blood surge with righteous anger, and just a bit of excitement. Perhaps slightly more than a bit. But this was perfect! Roger needed help liberating himself from a malicious master, and Jenny had the day wide open. She'd taken down whole governments in an afternoon, so this couldn't possibly be much trouble. She'd simply help Roger escape, and then make it back to the resort to meet Prentice for dinner. He wouldn't need to know about this little adventure, and could continue enjoying his vacation in peace. There was just one thing.

 

               "So who's your owner then?"

 

               "Well I suppose it's only fair you know, if you do intend to help me," said Roger, licking his paws. "Her Majesty Grenda, Queen of Zoop, and Protector of Its Many Moons. And, come to mention it, that seems to be her Royal Guard."

 

Jenny turned around to see three people in ridiculous clothing eyeing her and Roger. They started walking down the alley.

 

               "Well then," Jenny said to Roger, a smile creeping its way onto her face. "Seems like it's time to run!"


	2. Chapter 2

 

The Archivist waited in the shadows. This was nothing new. The Archivist was always in the shadows, beyond the corner, mere mist in the fog. She was patient, silent, and she observed. She did all of this because it was her job, and her job was very important. She’d been tracking a dangerous creature. Something unique in all creation. This creature was powerful, clever, and unstoppable. It left a wake of destruction and chaos, and the Archivist had taken note. She’d followed the clues across space and across time. The hints were small, but the Archivist was smart, efficient. She’d tracked the creature to this exact place, this exact time. Such a quiet place. A relaxation spot, exquisitely beautiful, where people would come to escape the worries of an ordinary life. How unfortunate it all was. They had no idea the kind of monster lurking in their midst. The Archivist had been there mere hours, and while she had faith in her abilities, she knew they were going to be harshly tested. The creature could be anywhere nearby. It could be lurking in darker shadows, behind more distant corners. It could be--

 

               “Just give us back the damn cat!”

 

               “No! You will not take Roger’s freedom!”

 

It was there! The creature was out in the open, currently being chased by two members of the royal guard, and holding a...cat? The Archivist shook her head. It was no matter. She needed to capture the creature before the guards had the chance. They had no idea what they were dealing with, the dangers they were about to subject themselves to. The Archivist gathered her equipment, and stepped into the light. There was work to be done.

 

* * *

 

 

               “Here comes trouble,” Prentice sighed, and there trouble was. Trouble was Jenny, running towards him, out of breath, holding a cat. Prentice sat his book aside and rose from the beach chair on which he’d been lounging. He had a fear, though he tried not to think too hard about it, that his holiday was about to come to an end. “What have you been up to?” he asked as Jenny came to a stop in front of him. “I thought you were go-karting.”

 

               “What? Oh, right. Well, I was go-karting and now I’m not. Don’t worry about it,” Jenny said. Prentice worried about it.

 

               “Why do you have a cat?” he asked, allowing a hint of disapproval to color his tone.

 

               “This is Roger. He’s a friend of mine. Listen, how fast can we pack up and get out of here?”

           

               “Well, I know it won’t take you long to pack. My things are a bit more spread out, so it’ll take me about ten minutes, five if I hurry. Then we just need to get to our ship and--” Prentice stopped. He crossed his arms. “Jenny, what have you done this time?”

 

               “Nothing!”

 

Prentice didn't say anything. He didn’t need to.

 

               “Fine then, a few things,” Jenny said with a wince. “But it won’t be a problem as long as we leave. Quickly.”

 

That was about the best Prentice could hope for. After all, this was Jenny. There could have been far worse trouble than a hasty end to a nice vacation.

 

               “Alright then. Just lose the cat and we’ll get out of here.”

 

               “His name’s Roger, and he’s coming with us,” Jenny responded, and Prentice glared.

 

Under chapter 16, subsection #4a of the Time Agency’s approved field manual, the removal of life forms from their indigenous time zones was forbidden without direct approval by a senior officer. Prentice had just finished reading the footnotes of the very same subsection. Subsections were very important to Prentice. He was not about to disregard them for a cat called Roger, except for the fact that he was. But that was later. Right now, he said

 

               “Absolutely not!”

 

Jenny pouted. Roger meowed. Prentice couldn’t believe his life had come to this. Five minutes later (Prentice had hurried), they had their things packed up and were walking quickly to the docking bay where they’d left their spaceship.

 

An interesting note about Prentice is that he values safety nearly as much as rules. So, whilst most Time Agents are happy to brave the dangers of vortex travel without the aid of a capsule, Prentice is not. He had long ago fixed his vortex manipulator into a sturdy, though rather bulky and unappealing, spaceship. Now when Prentice had first started traveling with Jenny, he had prepared himself for a long, possibly quite heated argument that he was very likely to lose. Jenny certainly seemed to do things her way, disregarding the sane way, but Prentice was not about let her add one more unnecessary risk to the lifestyle of hers that was already a disaster in waiting. He had documents. Papers, figures, even the odd anecdotal evidence for color about how dangerous unprotected vortex travel could be. He’d compiled these into a speech, which he had written down on a stack of notecards, and had got as far as,

 

               “Jenny, I really feel we shouldn’t keep our vortex manipulators on when we travel--“

 

Before Jenny had interrupted him by saying,

 

               “That’s a brilliant idea!”

 

Prentice almost dropped his notecards.

 

               “R-Really? You’re agreeing with me. Why would you agree with me? I haven’t even told you about how unprotected vortex travel is associated with higher levels of--“

 

               “Keeping a vortex manipulator on you makes things too easy,” said Jenny. “Get into trouble, you can just zap right out of it. Where’s the fun in that?”

 

               “Um, yes, well, that’s not really the point I was--“

 

               “Prentice.”

 

               “Yes?”

 

               “I’m agreeing with you. Can’t you just be happy about that? It happens so rarely.”

 

It really does. So Prentice got his way, and soon, both his and Jenny’s vortex manipulators were locked away safely in the ship.

 

               “Don’t you think the ship needs a name?” Jenny had said after seeing it.

 

               “It’s not a pet. It’s a machine. It does a job, that’s all. It doesn’t need a name,” said Prentice.

 

               “We should call her Sasha.”

 

               “No. Absolutely--“

 

               “Brilliant? I’m glad you think so. Now how do you feel about painting her purple?”

 

               “You can’t do that, it would completely nullify its cloaking capabilities!”

 

               “So we’ll have to think about it then.”

 

               “We’re not painting it purple, and I’m not calling it Sasha!”

 

Several weeks later was when Jenny and Prentice were running away from royal guards in an attempt to rescue a cat called Roger.

 

               “Where did you leave Sasha?” Prentice asked as they approached the docking bay.

 

               “Um…”

 

Prentice stopped as suddenly as if he’d walked into a brick wall.

 

               “Jenny,” he said, fixing her with a pleading gaze. “Tell me you remember where you docked Sasha.”

 

               “It’ll come to me. You know, this wouldn’t happen if you’d let me paint her purple.”

 

               “You there! Just stop! We only want the cat!”

 

Two men, dressed in purple and gold sequined uniforms and wearing matching alpine hats, were running towards Prentice and Jenny, stunning staffs at the ready. They were the royal guards, and they were not pleased that the simple task of finding the queen’s lost cat had turned into a desperate footrace through the whole of the ocean resort. Jenny and Prentice began running in the opposite direction, but were stopped in their tracks when a figure in a long brown robe stepped into their path holding a gun.

 

               “Nobody move,” came a deep feminine voice from beneath the figure’s hood.

 

Jenny stopped. Then Prentice. Then the guards. Then Roger meowed.

 

               “That’s a good question,” Jenny replied. She called out to the figure, “Who are you?”

 

To which the Archivist responded,

               

               “The Archivist. And you’re coming with me before you hurt anyone else.”

 

Jenny didn’t know what that meant. She looked around. They were surrounded, Archivist on one side, guards on the other. All of three of them were armed, while she and Prentice had two duffel bags and a cat between them. There was only one thing she could do. Jenny thought.

 

A second later, and Roger leapt from Jenny’s arms and landed straight on the Archivists outstretched gun.

 

               “What the—get off!” the Archivist said, letting off a series of shots. All of them hit the ground as Roger kept tight hold of her arm, forcing the gun downwards.

 

The next second, the guards, who were under strict orders that nothing should happen to harm Roger, had pushed past Prentice and Jenny, and were tackling the Archivist to the ground. As the three wrestled with each other, Roger wriggled his way free, and hopped back into Jenny’s arms.

 

Prentice and Jenny wasted no time. They were off, running in the direction Jenny was pretty sure she had left Sasha, probably.

 

               “Jenny, who the hell was that?” Prentice asked once they were a good deal away from the action.

 

               “The Archivist, apparently. Don’t you ever listen?”

 

               “What’s an archivist doing chasing after you with a gun?”

 

               “Don’t know. Lots of people chase after me with guns. It’s not like we stop to chat."

 

* * *

 

Meanwhile, in a palace not far away, Her Majesty Grenda, Queen of Zoop, and Protector of its Many Moons, was crossing her arms.

 

               “How exactly does a cat escape my royal guards?”

 

One such royal guard, standing at attention, his hands shaking behind his back, gulped as Grenda continued to glare at him.

 

               “Well, your Majesty. It would seem that your cat had, um, help.”

 

Grenda’s mood was already bad, but this sunk it even further.

 

               “The resistance,” she said.

 

               “It’s possible. We’re looking into it, ma’am.”

 

Grenda rose from her thrown.

 

               “Once you find those responsible, have them locked away and tried for treason. It’s time we make an example of those who challenge me.”

 

               “Didn’t we do that last week? That woman who said your head looked like a shriveled-“

 

               “Clearly the message hasn’t sunk in yet! Stop questioning me, and get it done!”

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Izod was a moon. It was one of twelve moons surrounding the planet Zoop, and one of the three inhabitable ones. As such, Izod was ruled by the Queen of Zoop, a woman who tolerated only some of her subjects from the planet proper, and had outright contempt for those who were not. So Izod had a resistance movement. They met in the rec center across from town hall, just a few miles from the ocean resort in which Jenny and Prentice had been staying. Meetings were held every Tuesday. Tea, coffee, and light refreshments were provided. More about them later.

 

For now, there is an important note about the nature of government on Zoop, and therefore Izod. Zoop was ruled by an absolute monarchy. This meant that while there existed a parliament with free elections and courts subject to the rule of law, the monarch, in this case the queen, had complete control over all of it, and could change any aspect of government she saw fit for any reason, including that it simply struck her fancy. Throughout history, monarchs have justified themselves in a number of ways. For instance, in early Earth history, many claimed a divine right to rule, or a mandate from heaven. But the government of Zoop was a government of the 50th century. A society operating in such a modern, enlightened age could no longer use religion as the basis of government. No, instead the government was based on money.

 

Matthias Zoop was a skilled businessman born in the year 4705. His business was originally in the starwhale trade, a fact that made him a few enemies, but a lot more money. With it, he had the idea to buy things. First, he bought all the businesses in his city. Then all the businesses in the region. Once he died, his son Sandy bought everything in the country, and once he owned every important business on the planet, he figured he may as well declare himself king.

 

               “He can’t do that,” people at the time had said while watching him do it. “We have a government, and laws! Just because he says he’s king doesn’t make it true!”

 

So Sandy, in order to prove them wrong, began buying the government. First he bought himself an army. After that, buying judges and politicians had been easy. He paid for legislators to write up a new constitution and renamed the planet in his own honor. So 167 years later, his great great granddaughter sat comfortably on the throne he bought, or would have done if she had not been busy pacing whilst waiting for news on her missing, and currently presumed stolen, cat.

 

               “These people have no respect,” she said. “I mean really, stealing my dear Roger? How could they? What have I ever done to them?”

 

The answer to this was really quite a lot of things. She had a number of very public nicknames for Izodians: criminals, societal leeches, dumpy moon-bums, and hoppers (a particularly nasty Zoopian insult which literally refers to the way Izodians walk with the lighter gravitational pull of their moon, and which used more generally means, well, lets keep the rating of this story low by not mentioning). She’d also allowed a number of companies based in Zoop to begin exploiting Izod’s natural beauty for profit. Many resorts were built, though the companies building them paid nothing in local governmental taxes. The resorts opened and were a resounding financial success, though none of the money made its way to local shops and businesses. They expanded, buying up foreclosed businesses no longer able to make money from tourists who spent all their time at resorts. Even in the resorts themselves, Izodians couldn’t find a way to make a living.

 

               “We simply can’t hire Izodians,” explained a resort spokesperson. “Most tourists come from Zoop, you see. Zoopians just have such trouble understanding your accents.”

 

One Izodian began cursing at the resort representative, and, when told to refrain from using profanity replied,

 

               “You seemed to understand me fine just then!”

 

That wasn’t the only recent development that had Izodians angry. Just a few years back, Grenda had passed an exclusion act banning moon-born citizens from immigrating to Zoop. As a result, many Izodians could only see their friends and family on Zoop through hologram messaging, and while the technology was becoming more and more lifelike, no program had yet managed to perfectly mimic the gentle touch of a loved one. There were many reasons Izodians had to not like Grenda, and even more to dislike her family. Wisely, Kevin the guard mentioned none of them. Instead, he said,

 

                “We’ve got all transport in the region on lockdown, ma’am. It’s only a matter of time before we catch them.”

 

* * *

 

                “C’mon, get to the ship, it’s only a matter of time before they catch us!”

 

Jenny was waiting for Prentice to open the door to their ship’s slip just off the main docking bay.

 

                “It’s locked,” he said.

 

                “It would be,” said someone else. He was wearing a polo shirt bearing the resort logo, and had a friendly tag on that read, “Freddy, here to help!”

 

                “Why would it be locked?” said Jenny.

 

                “Government order,” said Freddy. “They’re shutting down all transportation in the area. Apparently they’re trying to track down a couple of people who stole the queen’s—is that a cat in your arms?”

 

                “Must be going, thanks for your help!” Prentice said, and started dragging Jenny away.

 

Prentice’s bad feeling, which had started up when he first saw Jenny that day, had grown exponentially worse. They had only been on holiday, and now they were here, pursued by government forces, and with no means of escape. There was only one way this could play out.

 

               “We have to overthrow the government,” said Jenny.

 

               “No. Big no. Triple no! God, why is that your answer to everything?”

 

               “Step one, we need to make contact with the resistance. They can give us the information we need on the government’s weak points, and from there it should be easy to—“

 

               “Jenny,” said Prentice. “We’re setting free a cat. That’s it. We don’t need to overthrow a government to do it.”

 

               “That’s rather optimistic of you,” said Jenny. Roger purred and licked his paws, and Jenny laughed. “You’re right, he absolutely is!”

 

Prentice had enough dignity not to ask what she meant by that. Jenny took a look at his face and sighed.

 

               “Alright then, we won’t overthrow the government,” she said. “But how else are we supposed to get out of this?”

 

That was the question Prentice had been hoping for. He’d also been dreading it. He was, after all, grateful Jenny was listening. He was, on the other hand, without the faintest idea how to answer. He searched his brain as if rifling through a filing cabinet to find something both more plausible and less dangerous than what Jenny was proposing. Eventually he found something, and without examining it too closely, took it out and let it fall from his lips.

 

               “We can take Roger back and say we’re sorry,” he said. Jenny raised an eyebrow at him. He gulped. “No really, hear me out.” He was thinking frantically now. “I mean, obviously the queen is pretty desperate to get him back. That proves she loves him, right?”

 

               “Roger says that’s exactly the point. She’s smothering him.”

 

               “Well so what? I have an aunt like that. Look, if she really cares about Roger that much, she’ll be willing to hear him out. Whatever problems exist between them, they can be fixed.”

 

               “She’s never heard him out before,” said Jenny.

 

               “Yeah, well, believe it or not, most humans can’t talk to cats.”

 

Jenny thought this was quite tragic. Based on Roger, it seemed to her cats had a great deal to say. She was skeptical. Not about humans not being able to talk to cats, as it seemed to her humans were incapable of a lot of things. But could it really work? She thought back to the Doctor, the way he’d ended a war, not by fighting, but by talking. She thought of the way he proved then that what was really needed was not violence, but understanding, and here she was ready to lead a revolution against a woman she had never met, and had little reason to hate. Jenny felt quite suddenly guilty.

               

               “You’re not actually considering this are you?” said Roger.

 

               “There has to be a better way,” she told him. She looked back to Prentice. “Okay. We’ll do things your way.”

 

* * *

 

The Archivist awoke to a dull pain permeating her entire body. She recognized the feeling, and inferred she must have been shot by her own stun gun. How embarrassing. She sat up, finding herself in a small, unfamiliar room. The walls were a dull blue, and the space was empty except for some folded chairs and tables stacked against each other on the other end of the room. For her part, she was laid out on several seat cushions, a tragic attempt at a makeshift bed.

 

               “I saw the way you fought against those guards,” came a voice. The Archivist turned to find a young man staring at her. “It was admirable. Also dangerous. I took you here so they wouldn’t find you.”

 

She considered him.

 

               “Two obvious questions come to mind,” she said. “Who are you, and where am I?”

 

               “I’m Julius. And this,” he said gesturing as if to display a far grander space than the one in which they found themselves, “is the headquarters of the resistance.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

Kevin the royal guard was having a difficult time understanding what he was hearing.

 

            “Let me get this straight. You want to perform couples counseling between the queen and her cat?”

 

The two people he’d been chasing only hours ago turned to each other and shrugged.

 

            “It sounds silly when you say it like that,” said Prentice.

 

            “That’s how you know it’s a good idea. Don’t second guess yourself, Prentice,” said Jenny. Roger remained unconvinced, but was willing to go along with it for the time being.

 

Kevin scratched at his collar.

 

            “Look, I don’t know how to put this to you. I’m under orders to arrest you.”

 

            “Only because you thought we were stealing Roger from his home,” said Jenny. “Now you know we were only trying to help him escape. But we thought about it, and we realized that what Roger really needs is a chance to be heard. I think the queen would rather appreciate that, wouldn’t you?”

 

            “Umm…” said Kevin.

 

            “We found the cat, and now we’re returning him,” said Prentice. “That’s it. We just had a little, well, misunderstanding in the middle there.”

 

Here’s the thing about Kevin. Kevin was not a royal guard because he enjoyed arresting people at the whim of the queen. He joined because it was a job with limited hours that nonetheless paid very well. These two factors had been very important, as three years back Kevin’s daughter had gotten sick. Very sick. And while his wife had steady employment, the fact that their single medical bill had grown into a stack made it clear that if they were to avoid crippling debt, Kevin would need to go back to work.

 

He’d searched all over, but outside the resorts, Izod’s economy was crumbling. Those few jobs he could find had him spending so much time outside the house, soon enough he was nearly paying more to his babysitters than he was making scrubbing toilets or serving food. When he saw that the royal guards were looking to build a permanent reserve force on Izod for the queen’s few visits there, it had seemed a prime opportunity. He now only worked a few days each year, and made enough money that his family no longer needed to worry. If it meant he was ostracized by his community, that people hurled insults, half-eaten food, and occasionally much worse at him, he could deal with it. He didn’t mind. Especially if it meant spending more time with his little girl who might never have the chance to grow into a woman.

 

Kevin did mind, on occasion, the orders he was told to carry out. Arresting protestors and the like was one thing. He always made an effort to be as gentle as possible when doing so, and they were never jailed for more than a few days, about the lengths of the queen’s visits. He did mind the very rare occasions in which he was told to put someone in the queen’s private dungeon. It was unlikely that those who entered would ever be free again. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, and Kevin was willing to use almost any excuse to avoid doing it.

 

The people in front of him now were young, and they were kind. They hadn’t been violent towards him, or anyone as far as he could see. He wanted very much to believe their story, ridiculous as it may be. He wanted to tell them to run away, to lie low, to save themselves. But then he thought of his family, and what might happen to them if he failed to catch the fugitives as the queen instructed. Whatever the outcome, it couldn’t be good. Not for him, and not for them.

 

On the other hand, Grenda might have pity on Jenny and Prentice. They were tourists, after all, not Izodians, a fact which would work in their favor. They had only been there a day, so it was unlikely they had any ties to the resistance which could be uncovered in an investigation. And they were, at this point at least, returning the queen’s cat. There was a good chance the two could come out of this mess and not get into any trouble at all.

 

            “Very well,” Kevin announced. “I’ll take you to see the queen.” Then he said, much quieter, “But please, just say you found the cat and didn’t know why you were being chased. The queen will be far more forgiving if she thinks you made an honest mistake.”

 

Prentice was relieved. Jenny, however, was not about to listen. She’d made a promise to Roger, and if she wasn’t about to help him escape, the very least she could do was allow him the chance to talk to his owner. Still, she kept her mouth shut. Soon enough she would see the queen, and after a nice chat, Grenda and Roger would come to an understanding. If not, there was always Plan B. Sure, Plan B was a little vague at the moment. It mostly involved a lucky coincidence that would allow them to escape the queen’s palace without being stunned by guards. Oh well. It would all come together. Only if it needed to, of course. No, Jenny was pretty sure Plan A would go just fine. At least 40% sure, which was about as sure as she was on most things. It kept things interesting, that.

 

Kevin led them from the outer halls into the throne room, a space far larger and more ornate than Jenny felt was strictly necessary. Of course, Jenny was born a soldier, and had lived most of her life in a cramped spaceship, hopping from planet to planet with possessions the sum total of which could be crammed into a duffel bag. Still, she’d seen plenty of palaces and monuments, buildings ornate simply for ornateness’s sake, and even by those standards, this place was _ridiculous_. Looking up, Jenny could hardly see the ceiling as it stretched itself high, and as she looked around she saw walls plastered with masterful paintings, any one of which could be hanging as the prime showpiece in the galaxy’s most renowned museums.

 

Jenny was still shaky on the whole money thing. She wasn’t entirely sure how it worked, or why some things cost more than others, why some things were for sale and others were priceless. But she had recently had the opportunity to explore Izod, and knew that just outside the picturesque resorts, the picture painted was far bleaker. She’d seen men, women, and children living on crumbling streets, and as she took in the grandeur now surrounding her, she didn’t need to know anything more to know that the money spent on this palace could have been better spent elsewhere. And, at the very center of it, the queen sat on her thrown.

 

Grenda’s eyes locked immediately on Roger, and without a word she was up, moving swiftly across the floor with her hands outstretched. As she approached, Jenny could feel Roger squirm with discomfort. She could hear the murmurings of his thoughts, all of them converging into one coherent plea. _Don’t let her touch me_. At long last, Grenda was right in front of Jenny. She reached out. Jenny pulled away.

 

               “No. You will _not_ grab this pussy cat. Not without permission,” said Jenny.

 

The queen’s expression turned as dark and stormy as a literary cliché, and Kevin took several steps back.

 

               “ _Permission_?” Grenda repeated. “You think I need _your_ permission? Are you aware of who I am?”

 

               “You’re right,” Jenny replied. “You don’t need my permission. You need his.”

 

Grenda looked to Prentice. Prentice shrugged. She looked to Kevin, who looked ready to throw himself out the nearest window. Finding no clarification, she prepared to turn the extent of her fury back on Jenny.

 

               “Roger’s permission,” said Jenny. Grenda’s anger turned to confusion. “You’ve been having some communication issues. Don’t worry though, I’ll soon fix that.”

 

               “Will you?” asked the queen.

 

               “I’ll certainly try.”

 

               “Guard,” Grenda growled. Kevin immediately straightened up, placing his hands behind his back in case they started shaking again. “Why have you brought these _people_ ”—here she spat the word—“into my presence?”

 

               “I-I, well, umm, your majesty—“

 

               “Stop stuttering and answer me!”

 

               “They found your cat, ma’am,” Kevin managed. “They, um, thought it best to return him to you directly, w-with apologies for causing any worry or confusion. They’re just tourists, you see. Didn’t mean anything by it.”

 

               “You say they found my Roger?” said the queen.

 

               “In a rubbish bin,” Jenny said helpfully. “You see, Roger wasn’t lost, or stolen. He was trying to establish his independence, make his own way in life and—“

 

               “Well this is just ridiculous,” Grenda said. Prentice was silently grateful she’d managed to stop a Jenny rant before it had a chance to overwhelm everyone within hearing range. “Roger wouldn’t just leave me. He loves me.”

 

Roger meowed.

 

               “I am not repeating that,” Jenny said to him. She looked back to Grenda. “There comes a time, ma’am, when the ones we love need space from us. Like Prentice and me. That’s why we came here on holiday. Bit of time apart, and we get along much better. He’s usually much angrier at me when I get in trouble.”

 

               “Well I’m not exactly pleased,” Prentice felt necessary to add.

 

Grenda huffed.

 

               “And just how would you know what my Roger wants? It’s not as if he told you.”

 

               “Actually, ma’am, he did. I speak cat.”

 

               “What she meant to say,” Prentice interjected, “is that she’s telepathic. She can hear your cat’s thoughts. Your, um, majesty. Ma’am.”

 

               “I see. So you say my Roger ran away, not that you stole him,” said Grenda. Jenny and Prentice nodded vigorously. “I see. Well, in that case, this changes things.”

 

Prentice could not believe his luck.

 

               “Guard, take all of them to the dungeon.”

 

Really, absolutely could not believe it.

 

               “Which one, ma’am?” Kevin asked.

 

               “The nice one. Has it got the new sofas yet?”

 

               “Just installed this morning, ma’am.”

 

               “Wait. I’m sorry. Just. A nice dungeon?” Prentice said.

 

As it turned out, the queen had several private dungeons in her palace on Izod. Most of them were dark, dingy, hopeless places where Grenda could throw her enemies to rot. The thing was, Grenda really enjoyed seeing her enemies rot. Having spent years dealing with her emotions in increasingly unhealthy ways, the atmosphere had become therapeutic to her. So, a few years back, she’d decided to repurpose one of the cells into a personal office. It had a desk, carpeting, pictures of herself, Roger, and her father, and comfortable sofas which had newly been installed. This was where Prentice, Jenny, and Roger had been led by Kevin, the queen following just behind.

 

               “Sit,” Grenda commanded as she strode into the room. Prentice and Jenny did so. “Guard, I’ll have my tea the usual way. Would you two like anything?”

 

Prentice was trying to wrap his mind behind what was happening. He was sitting in a dungeon, on a comfy sofa, being offered a cup of tea by the queen who’d wanted him arrested.

 

               “Um. No, that’s quite alright,” he said.

 

               “Are you sure?” said the queen. “No tea? Coffee? Water? Light snack?”

 

               “I’m fine, thank you.”

 

               “And what about you dear?” Grenda addressed Jenny.

 

               “Do you have any strawberries? I love strawberries.”

 

Kevin left to fetch tea and strawberries. The queen looked across her desk, her expression unreadable.

 

               “Um, so—“ said Prentice.

 

               “Are we in trouble?” said Jenny.

 

               “Of course not, my dears,” said Grenda. She let out a slow, mournful sigh. “I’ve known for a while now that Roger and I have been having…difficulties, in our relationship. You can really speak cat?”

 

Jenny nodded.

 

               “Excellent. Then you’ll be able to help us. Now tell me, when you say Roger thinks I’m smothering him…”


	5. Chapter 5

            “So after my mother died, my father was hardly ever around. I swore that as I grew older, my family would always know I’m here for them, you see, and that I love them,” said Grenda.

 

            “I do see,” said Jenny. “So you internalized this abandonment, interpreting it as a sign you weren’t deserving of your father’s love. But the problem is, you’ve come to understand love as a commodity. Just as you grew tired of the endless gifts your father provided instead of affection, you give your love in excess. Don’t you see how Roger might interpret this love as inauthentic due to the volume and intensity of your actions? Love is best expressed in small ways. A word of encouragement here, a brief kiss there…”

 

Prentice had brought out his book about twenty minutes into the current conversation. For the first ten minutes, he’d been convinced the queen had been playing some cruel joke. At minute fifteen, he’d come to realize she was not only being genuine, but that talking to Jenny was actually helping her. By now, he felt comfortable that the conversation was going incredibly well, and that he might be able to finish his vacation after all. He popped one of Jenny’s strawberries into his mouth as he reviewed the Time Agency’s policies on the ethical use of knowledge gained through time travel, and was just about to take out his highlighter to make note of a particularly important point when Kevin burst into the room.

 

            “Ma’am, we have a problem.”

 

Prentice sighed and slipped a bookmark back into his book, and his book back into his jacket pocket. He grabbed a strawberry, the last one on the plate, and chewed it while Kevin delivered his news.

 

            “We’ve had reports of an individual or individuals attacking the palace gates. It would seem likely the resistance is moving against you, so until we have the situation under control, it would be best to have you moved to a more secure location.”

 

            “The resistance?” asked Jenny. Her eyes lit up.

 

            “Jenny, no,” said Prentice.

 

            “I’m just curious,” she replied.

 

            “Yeah, well that’s what killed the cat,” said Prentice.

 

Roger meowed.

 

            “Sorry,” Prentice said to him. “I didn’t mean that as a threat.”

 

            “I understand the concern,” said Grenda. “But Roger and I have been making substantial progress. Take me somewhere secure, but wherever I go, Jenny, Prentice, and Roger come with me. You know I never realized how much of my father’s inattention I internalized, guard?”

 

Kevin had, in all honesty, not thought the subject through in the slightest. He worried that this might get him in trouble.

 

            “Come with me, ma’am,” he said instead. “I’ll show you to the panic room.”

 

Grenda had more room to panic than Jenny and Prentice had to live in. In fairness, Sasha was a fairly small spaceship. Also in fairness, Grenda’s panic room was very big.

 

            “So this resistance,” Jenny started out. Prentice was ready to tear his hair out. “What do they want?”

 

            “Oh, nothing they deserve. Bloody hoppers think they should be treated as equal to all my other citizens!” said Grenda.

 

            “And you…disagree?” said Jenny. “Well that’s horrible. And you call yourself their queen?”

 

            “Jenny!” said Prentice. “Your majesty, please forget that. Let’s get back to our earlier conversation, it was about, um, I think your dad didn’t love you?”

 

            “No wonder Roger was so eager to escape. I thought when he called you a heartless, vindictive tyrant he was just being melodramatic,” said Jenny. Roger meowed. “Hm? Oh right, a heartless, vindictive, gaudily dressed tyrant. With a poor sense of humor. Hang on, I wasn’t meant to translate that bit. No chance of you ignoring that?”

 

There wasn’t. Minutes later, Prentice, Jenny, and Roger were sharing a dungeon cell together. They had an argument, wherein Prentice got upset and asked for a fruit basket. He’d been contentedly sulking in the corner for at least a whole, gloriously silent minute when Jenny started talking again. Prentice marked this a new record for patience on her part.

 

            “So they do have a resistance then,” she said.

 

            “No,” said Prentice.

 

            “What do you mean no?”

 

            “I mean I know what you’re going to say, and no.”

 

            “You don’t know you’d say no, you haven’t even heard what I’m going to say.”

 

            “You want us to join up with the resistance,” said Prentice. “Well we can’t. We’re locked away in a dungeon. The security is solid, we haven’t a hope of making it out of here on our own.”

 

            “Well duh!”

 

            “Duh?”

 

            “It’s a new word I heard, I’m trying it out.”

 

            “Please don’t.”

 

            “Well the point is,” said Jenny, “we’re not alone. We could have help all around us, and it won’t be hard to get. Because you’re right, Prentice, we are in a dungeon, but the dungeon’s right where we want to be!”

 

            “You’re not going to suggest—“

 

            “Prison uprising!”

 

            “Jenny, these people are probably hardened criminals!”

 

            “Well by most definitions, we’re hardened criminals. Dungeons are actually wonderful places for us to meet likeminded individuals.”

 

            “I am not a hardened criminal!”

 

            “Oh please, Prentice, you’ve been to more prisons than parties in your life.”

 

            “I don’t like parties. I prefer spending time with people on a more individual basis.”

 

            “I thought it was because you never got invited.”

 

            “I never get invited because I never go! Why are we talking about this? I’m not a criminal, I just happen to be standing next to you when you get us in trouble. _You’re_ the hardened criminal here, not me!”

 

            “Excellent. Then you’ll let me do the talking.”

 

            “Um, excuse me?” Outside the cell stood a sheepish looking Kevin. “You do know the cells are monitored? We can hear every word you’re saying.”

 

            “I wasn’t doing anything, it was all her!” said Prentice. He would allow himself to be arrested for Jenny’s sake, but he was not about to be found guilty of an attempted prison revolt on the same day. A man had to have boundaries.

 

            “No chance you won’t tell Grenda about this, is there Kev?” said Jenny.

 

            “She already knows, it’s why she sent me.”

 

            “Ah,” said Jenny. “And I suppose she sent you with not great news?”

 

            “Well, you know how she locked you away in here for life? Well the good news is your sentence is about to get a lot shorter.”

 

            “We’re to be executed then,” said Jenny.

 

            “Judging from the Queen’s tone, that was rather the implication, yes.”

 

            “You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Prentice, his eyes filling with tears.

 

            “Don’t worry, Prentice,” said Jenny. “Executions take time to set up. Especially here, Grenda loves a show. We have time, and in that time something’s bound to turn up.”

 

Prentice had a thing about optimism. He disagreed with it. Optimism meant sacrificing future preparedness for present happiness, which was more or less Jenny in a nutshell. Prentice, on the other hand, would describe himself as a realist, meaning he was in fact a pessimist. He sacrificed current happiness, and would have loved to receive future preparedness in return, but traveling with Jenny had become so unpredictable that he couldn’t rely on even that. Prentice now went through every day full of dread, but despite his sincerest wishes, his anxiety had not had the desired effect of attracting Jenny’s notice and prompting her to become a more responsible person. As a pessimist, Prentice wasn’t surprised. As a person he was extremely sad.

 

One person who really was a realist was the Archivist. What this meant was that she spent no time thinking about the relative merits of optimism, pessimism, or realism. Such distinctions she would view as reductive. This also meant that as she attacked the Queen’s palace, she did not expect it to go especially well or especially poorly. She knew exactly how her plan would play out. She knew that by that by faking an attack at the gates, no one would be expecting an expert in stealth to sneak inside the palace. She knew that, once inside, security efforts would be focused outwards, allowing her to more easily make her way through the halls. She also knew that, more likely than not, she would be able to find her target in the palace dungeon, which she knew would be in the lowest levels. She knew her way around the most advanced security systems in the galaxy, and that once she had bypassed them, the rest of the mission would be easy.

 

The Archivist waited for the guard to leave, and approached the cell door. She scanned a stolen security card, and the door swung open.

 

            “Come with me,” she said. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

 

Prentice, the pessimist, saw before him the woman who had only recently tried to shoot them. He feared that whatever the Archivist’s motives for breaking them out, the end result would be a messy and painful death.

 

Jenny, the optimist, saw before her an enemy who, through a serendipitous change of heart had become a friend at just the right moment to rescue them. She hoped that whatever the Archivist’s motives, they were about to be led from execution and away to freedom.

 

            “No. No way,” said Prentice.

 

            “You know how I said something would turn up?” said Jenny. “I’m right about basically most things. Come on, Prentice. Or would you rather stay here to be executed?”

 

            “Can I think about it?”

 

Jenny strode forward and began following the Archivist out of the dungeon. Prentice, not about to abandon Jenny to whatever terrible fate surely awaited her, followed after them. But he did wait a few seconds before doing so just to prove a point. He was pretty sure this went ignored. It didn’t. Jenny just assumed he had trouble sometimes with doors.


	6. Chapter 6

Grenda’s heart was breaking. It was being stomped on by a metal boot, dropped from a spaceship in low orbit, shot by a blaster, and stood up on prom night all at once. Every second was agony as the piercing emptiness threatened to swallow her whole. Roger, it seemed, was completely gone from her.

 

It wasn’t as if he’d died. No, that would have been fine. Grenda had seen pets die before, and while it was slightly more troubling than watching her parents die, she could handle it. What Roger did was far worse than die. He’d left her. Grenda had poured everything into loving him, and it still wasn’t enough. He’d left palaces, servants, and golden litter boxes behind, and all because the thought of a future with Grenda was more than he was willing to endure, however softened this fate was by luxury.

 

The girl could be lying, Grenda knew. She could have invented the insults and pretended they came from Roger. He could still love her. But as Jenny spoke the words, Grenda felt their truth. She felt it every time Roger left a room she entered, or hissed at her touch. She couldn’t blame this hurt on Jenny. This was between a queen and her cat.

 

Grenda didn’t know what to feel. She felt abandoned and lonely. She felt rejected and insulted. She felt angry, and yes, she knew what to feel now. Anger focused her, and it was an emotion that could be pointed outwards. Grenda, for all her egomania, had no desire to self-reflect. She wanted others to suffer and pay in order to stop her own pain.

 

So it had been that she’d sent Roger and his co-conspirators to the dungeon, and not the nice one. When she’d seen them planning a revolt, she was delighted to find that the prospect of an execution (well, three) eased her pain even more. But when finally the cameras, not just to the dungeon but to the whole palace went out, she was livid.

 

            “Security breach!” came a frantic call from one of the palace guards. The room was erupting in a cacophony of alarms and troubled shouting.

 

            “Do we have someone down there with—“, “Where’s the breach—“, “Is the perimeter still vulnerable, do we have to worry—“, “Someone needs to fix—“

 

            “They’re gone,” someone said finally. “The cameras are back up, and the prisoners—they’re gone.”

 

Grenda rose from her throne. “Each one of you will do everything in your power to get them back. I’ll die before I see those criminals escape from me!”

 

* * *

 

The criminals were with the Archivist, currently at the resistance headquarters located in the rec center across from town hall. They were sitting in fold-out chairs sipping tea made for them by Julius, a nice young man who fought for the freedom of his people in between attending law classes at the local university. He also provided biscuits.

 

Meanwhile, Prentice was having a raging internal debate with himself. Should he or should he not ask the Archivist what she wanted with them? On the one hand, he was loathe to stretch the luck they’d had so far. After all, the escape had certainly been unexpected, and the tea was a nice touch. On the other hand, they still had no idea who the Archivist was, what she wanted, or whether she was going to start shooting at them again. There was the danger that not asking after her intentions could lull them into complacency, making it easier for her to strike them down later. And now, of course, she had an accomplice in the form of Julius. Prenticed stared at him. Julius smiled back pleasantly. He must not be trusted. Still, Prentice thought, complacency at this point might not be a bad thing. After the stressful events preceding their current predicament, they really needed some time to cool off. So it was that Prentice decided to simply let things play out. There was no need to rush things by questioning the intent of the dangerous, unpredictable character who had probably just saved their lives.

 

            “So why’d you help us escape then?” said Jenny.

 

Prentice was coming to realize it was probably best if he didn’t make plans while Jenny was around. She had an incredible knack for contradicting them, sometimes even when she had no idea what they were. The Archivist, for her part, considered Jenny coolly.

 

            “There were two possibilities once you’d been arrested by the queen,” the Archivist began. “The first was that the queen would want you executed. I can’t have that. The second was that the queen would attempt to keep you locked up for life.”

 

            “She’s right,” said Julius. “No one’s ever come out of the dungeons alive.”

 

            “In either case, you would have escaped in a matter of hours at the very most. I had to act quickly,” said the Archivist.

 

            “Yeah, you two would have—sorry, what? No, those two would be rotting or dead without your help!” said Julius.

 

            “No, you’re quite right. That dungeon would’ve been child’s play for us,” said Jenny. She leaned over to whisper in Prentice’s ear. “This is brilliant, she thinks we’re good! Don’t tell her the truth, I want more people around who think we’re impressive.”

 

            “Let me get this straight,” Prentice said to the Archivist. “You helped us escape to prevent us escaping?”

 

            “I needed to make sure I didn’t lose track of you,” said the Archivist as she took another sip of her tea.

 

            “But why? What do you want with us?” said Jenny.

 

            “My interest is in you specifically, Jenny. You’re a fascinating subject, unique as well as dangerous. The group I work for is…keen on knowing more about you. At first I believed I would have to stun you to bring you with me.” She took out her blaster, twirling it around with her hand. “But I’ve come to realize it would be better if you came along voluntarily.”

 

            “Jenny,” said Prentice. “Remember when I taught you about stranger danger?”

 

            “To prevent me from talking to that nice woman from Pluto last week?” she said.

 

            “She was a psychopath and wanted drug smuggler. She tried to maim you with her spoon.”

 

            “Well she was nice before that. What’s your point?”

 

            “Point being, while I appreciate your help, Ms. Archivist-lady, um, person,” Prentice said nodding his acknowledgment, “following a stranger to be studied by a vague, frankly sinister sounding organization for no reason at all is not the sort of thing Jenny will be doing.”

 

            “Please, Prentice. You’re my handler, not my dad. I don’t have to listen to you,” said Jenny. She took a sip of tea. “But in this case I will. Sorry, Archivist. I’m afraid I’m far too busy to go anywhere with you.”

 

            “Busy looking for someone?” the Archivist said. Jenny froze. “My organization doesn’t simply study you. We have files on billions of subjects, and on one in particular that I know will interest you. After all, wasn’t he what this was all about? You’ve certainly been making a lot of noise, but it hasn’t attracted his attention. Well, if he won’t find you, perhaps it’s your turn to look for him. We can give you the resources to do that. What do you say?”

 

            “Jenny?” said Prentice softly.

 

For all the two had been through together, Prentice realized, he knew very little about Jenny’s past. With the way she acted, it was sometimes easy to assume she’d burst fully formed into the universe to drag him along into trouble. Still, everyone came from somewhere. Everyone had a past. Prentice didn’t know where Jenny came from, whether she had friends or family she left behind, or even what species she was. While Prentice had always been curious about these things (what kind of environment even produces someone like Jenny?), this not knowing had never bothered him. He looked at Jenny, her face pale and lips pressed thin. She looked much older suddenly, and serious in a way Prentice had never seen her. The not knowing? It bothered him now.

 

            “I’ll go with you,” said Jenny. “Prentice, you don’t have to come along. I know you don’t think it’s a good idea.”

 

            “But—Then don’t go! What if it’s a trap? You can’t risk it!”

 

            “I have to. Some things are worth it.”

 

            “I’m glad you see it that way,” said the Archivist. “As soon as you’ve finished your tea, we can be on our way.”

 

            “No!” said Prentice. “Absolutely not, Jenny—“

 

            “It’s my choice. I’m sorry Prentice, but you won’t stop me.”

 

In the kitchen, Julius was setting out a bowl of milk. Roger purred gratefully, brushing past Julius’ legs as he began to lap it up. Julius bent down to pet him, and as he did so spotted the collar around his neck. Julius turned the tag over in his hands, considering it as a slow smile spread across his face.

 

            “Were you three about to head out?” said Julius as he returned to where his guests were seated.

 

            “We had intended to leave soon. Why?” asked the Archivist.

 

            “Well, the three of you are still wanted by the royal guards, and I don’t like my queen. What if I told I just thought of a way to solve both our problems?”

 

            “I’d say it sounds exciting!” said Jenny.

 

            “What’s your plan?” asked the Archivist.

 

            “Oh, here we go,” said Prentice.

 

* * *

 

Grenda awoke to a dull pain permeating her entire body. She didn’t recognize the feeling, and could deduce nothing from it. She sat up, finding herself in a bright, unfamiliar room. In the corner of the room was a video screen, and while it was muted, she could make out the headlines of the day’s news.

 

IZOD ACHIEVES INDEPENDENCE AS MONARCHY ABOLISHED

 

Legend has it that it was Grenda’s scream that broke the window in her hospital room. This story is apocryphal. While the window was indeed broken, it was the chair Grenda threw at it rather than her scream that was responsible. It was, however, a very loud scream. Loud enough that upon hearing it, a nearby doctor rushed into the room.

 

            “What’s wrong?” the doctor asked.

 

Grenda, unable to articulate, simply pointed at the screen.

 

            “Ah,” said the doctor. “Yes, I suppose I should explain…”

 

Here’s the short version. Julius’ plan worked. The long version? Well it started with Prentice and Jenny being used as bait.

 

            “I’m not sure I like this plan,” Prentice had said.

 

            “Weeee!” Jenny had replied as the two dodged gunshots and guards by weaving through alley after alley.

 

The queen, wanting to see justice executed (or at the very least see her enemies executed), had followed along to supervise her guards.

 

            “Left! They turned left you incompetents!” she’d shouted. She was right of course. They had turned left. Kevin, however, had led the chase right, in other words incorrectly, and deliberately so. He worried at the time that this would get him in trouble. He would later be pleased to find out it did the opposite.

 

Meanwhile, the Archivist had settled in atop a building with her blaster at the ready and Julius at her side. Her blaster was set to stun, but unlike before was set to its highest setting. Whoever she hit would be knocked out not for a few hours, but for up to two weeks. As Julius pointed her out, the Archivist took careful aim, and hit Grenda square in the chest.

 

            “It’s up to you now,” the Archivist had said.

 

            “I take my exams in just a few weeks,” Julius had said. “I know more about the law than I know about myself. It’ll work. Trust me.”

 

Two days later, the queen’s royal advisor was pacing the throne room in a panic. The queen had shown no sign of waking up anytime soon, and in the meantime the government was operating without its monarch. Now this wasn’t exactly a problem per se, as the government was getting on perfectly well. This was a problem for the royal advisor, however, as without a royal to advise, the advisor was worried they could be docked pay.

 

            “Oh no, what should I do?” the royal advisor lamented.

 

            “Well, legally speaking, you need to appoint a regent,” said Julius.

 

            “Who are you? How’d you get in here?” said the advisor.

 

The answer of course was that the Archivist had snuck him in. Him, and someone else.

 

            “This is Roger, the queen’s cat,” Julius had said, gesturing down to his feet where Roger was standing. “And, again legally speaking, he’s next in line for the throne.”

 

Roger, Prince Regent of Zoop, and Protector of its Many Moons, had a very progressive yet very short reign. He granted a medal of heroism to Kevin the royal guard, which guaranteed him and his family financial security for life. He repealed many of the more damaging laws for the planet Izod, and passed a few helpful ones. He also provided funding for animal rights groups across his vast kingdom, particularly ones with a focus on cats. Finally, he divided the rest of his wealth among various respectable charities and abolished the monarchy. In his final address to his subjects, he said that he would retire to play with yarn and chase birds. He did do that, and enjoyed it immensely.

 

As she heard all this, Grenda’s face turned pink. Then red. Then purple. As it began to turn blue, the doctor was ready to intervene, but Grenda simply screamed and returned to her proper color.

 

* * *

 

            “I still wish you’d let Roger come with us,” said Jenny aboard a spaceship.

 

            “No pets. That’s where I draw the line,” Prentice returned.

 

Jenny sighed, looking out the window to see the passing stars.

 

            “Jenny,” Prentice began hesitantly. “Who is it you’re looking for? Are you sure they’re worth all this?”

 

            “I’m looking for my family,” said Jenny. “And yes, every time.”

 

The Archivist watched unnoticed from the doorway. She considered saying something, but instead turned and walked back to the control deck. The girl would find out soon enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all, folks! That's the last chapter. Obviously this could get expanded later at some point, but for now I'm happy with it. Thanks to everyone who read this to the end, which is presumably you, the person reading this right now. Possibly others too. Who can say. It's one of life's great mysteries.


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